BILL NUMBER: AJR 69	CHAPTERED  09/18/00

	RESOLUTION CHAPTER   152
	FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE   SEPTEMBER 18, 2000
	ADOPTED IN SENATE   AUGUST 31, 2000
	ADOPTED IN ASSEMBLY   AUGUST 21, 2000
	AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY   AUGUST 18, 2000

INTRODUCED BY   Assembly Members Aanestad and Florez and Senators
Costa and Leslie
   (Coauthors:  Assembly Members Alquist, Ashburn, Briggs, Calderon,
Cardoza, Correa, Cox, Dickerson, Dutra, House, Machado, Mazzoni,
Olberg, Oller, Robert Pacheco, Papan, Pescetti, Reyes, Strom-Martin,
and Thomson)
   (Coauthors:  Senators Chesbro, Johannessen, McPherson, Monteith,
and Poochigian)

                        JULY 6, 2000

   Assembly Joint Resolution No. 69--Relative to national forest
lands.



	LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   AJR 69, Aanestad.  National forest lands.
   This measure would request that the United States Forest Service
and other federal land management agencies implement a cohesive
strategy to reduce the overabundance of forest fuels and would
request the United States Departments of Agriculture and Interior to
immediately draft a national prescribed fire strategy for public
lands.




   WHEREAS, The April 1999 General Accounting Office report entitled
"Western National Forests, a Cohesive Strategy is Needed to Address
Catastrophic Wildfire Threats" states, "The most extensive and
serious problem related to the health of national forests in the
interior west is the overaccumulation of vegetation, which has caused
an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable, and
catastrophically destructive wildfires"; and
   WHEREAS, The April 2000 U.S. Forest Service report entitled,
"Protecting People and Sustaining Resources in Fire-Adapted
Ecosystems:  Cohesive Strategy" in response to the General Accounting
Office report, confirmed the conclusion stated above and further
warns, "Without increased restoration treatments... wildfire
suppression costs, natural resource losses, private property losses,
and environmental damage are certain to escalate as fuels continue to
accumulate and more acres become high-risk."  The report also
specifies that, at a low intensity, fire is ecologically beneficial,
and has positive effects on biodiversity, soil productivity, and
water quality; and
   WHEREAS, The U.S. Forest Service further acknowledges that 39
million acres of national forest are at significant risk of
catastrophic wildfire and an additional 26 million acres will be at
similar risk due to increases in the mortality of trees and brush
caused by insects and disease; and
   WHEREAS, The National Research Council and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency recognized catastrophic wildfires such as those in
California in 1993 and Florida in 1998 as among the defining natural
disasters of the 1990s; and
   WHEREAS, Catastrophic wildfires not only cause damage to the
forests and other lands, but place the lives of firefighters at risk
and pose threats to human health, personal property, sustainable
ecosystems, air, and water quality; and
   WHEREAS, According to the National Fire Protection Association,
wildland-urban interface catastrophic wildfires from 1985 to 1994
destroyed 9,925 homes, and in 1999 alone burned 6 million acres of
public lands nationwide, equivalent to a 1.5 mile-wide swath from
Washington D.C. to Los Angeles and back; and
   WHEREAS, The escaped Cerro Grande Prescribed Fire in May 2000,
which consumed 48,000 acres and destroyed 400 homes with losses
exceeding $1 billion in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the escaped
Lowden Prescribed Fire in 1999 that destroyed 23 homes in Lewiston,
California, highlight, the unacceptable risks of using prescribed
burning if, as reported, that burning was the sole forest management
practice of federal land management agencies; and
   WHEREAS, High-risk forest fuel has accumulated in combination with
reduced fire response capability by federal agencies during the
1990s, resulting in catastrophic wildfires becoming more difficult
and expensive to extinguish with a disproportionate burden being
placed on state and local resources, while the costs to fight these
fires increased by 150 percent between 1986 and 1994, and the costs
of maintaining a readiness force increased by 70 percent between 1992
and 1997; and
   WHEREAS, Current planning efforts of the U.S. Forest Service such
as the Sierra Nevada Framework, Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem
Management Project, the Roadless Initiative, and the Federal Monument
proclamations rely primarily on extensive use of prescribed fire,
which will further exacerbate the risk of catastrophic wildfire on
federal lands throughout the west; now, therefore, be it
   Resolved by the Assembly and Senate of the State of California,
jointly, That in the interest of protecting the integrity and
posterity of our forest and wild lands, wildlife habitat, watershed,
air quality, human health and safety, and private property, the U.S.
Forest Service and other federal land management agencies must
immediately implement a cohesive strategy to reduce the overabundance
of forest fuels that place these resources at high risk of
catastrophic wildfire; and be it further
   Resolved, That the agencies utilize an appropriate mix of fire
suppression activities and forest management methodologies, including
selective thinning, selective harvesting, grazing, the removal of
excessive ground fuels, and small-scale prescribed burns, including
increased private, local, and state contracts for prefire treatments
on federal forest lands.  More effective fire suppression in federal
forestlands should be pursued through increased funding of mutual aid
agreements with professional state and local public firefighting
agencies; and be it further
   Resolved, That, in the interest of forest protection and rural
community safety, the Departments of Agriculture and Interior
immediately draft for public review and adoption a national
prescribed fire strategy for public lands that creates a process for
evaluation of worst case scenarios for risk of escape and identifies
alternatives that will achieve the land management objectives while
minimizing the risk and use of prescribed fire. This strategy should
be incorporated into any regulatory land-use planning program that
propose the use of prescribed fire as a management practice; and be
it further
   Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of
this resolution, endorsed by the Western Legislative Forestry Task
Force, to President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Secretary of the
Interior Babbitt, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, the Members
of Congress from all of the western states, the U.S. Forest Service,
the U.S. Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management.
